LIVE BLOG: Ongoing Coverage From The Ceremony in New York City

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Oct 30, 2009

Here at PM, we're pretty fond of saying that we don't mind getting our hands dirty--that, in fact, we kind of like it. And we're happy to report that when it comes time to put the money where our mouths are, we don't disappoint.

With less than eight hours to go before the main event, set up for tonight's second annual Breakthrough Awards is well underway. And that means some of PM's finest are downstairs in the lobby of the Hearst Tower--where we'll hold our reception and ceremony--unpacking, lifting and admiring the (awfully heavy) innovations that are about to make their mark on the world. Some of us were here until after 10 p.m. Eastern Time last night--but it seems a small price to pay when what you're honoring will have such an impact.

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Each year, the Breakthrough Awards pay tribute to products and people who, through science and technology, are inspiring and empowering people, solving problems, and making the world a better place. This year, we're honoring ten people or teams and ten products. Some are high-tech advances and some are simple solutions, but all are accomplishing big goals.

So who has PM chosen this year? You'll have to tune in later today for our live video and podcasts, not to mention more live blogs, to find out. But right now, we're headed back downstairs to keep unpacking. After all, we love to get our hands dirty.--Erin McCarthy

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LIVE BLOG: Pedaling for Peanuts

Burt Rutan, our Breakthrough Leadership Award winner, is in the building live on The Popular Mechanics Show after talking shop with our other honorees, one of whom just showed off our simplest—but maybe most broadly effective—innovation of the year.

Jock Brandis, a TV and movie engineer in North Carolina, has developed an inexpensive, beyond easy-to-make peanut cracker (scroll down) that he came up with on the set of the otherwise dreadful movie Dracula 2000.

About a half-million people rely on peanuts for protein, and it's a powerful cash crop in 108 countries. Problem is, women in Africa spend four billion hours per year opening the nuts by hand, often waking up a 4 a.m. to start shelling in countries like Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan, which has the world's highest peanuts per capita ratio.

In comes the universal nut sheller, Brandis' $75 DIY machine built with the entire contents of a metal and a concrete oil drum. A hand crank version is set up next to our Breakthrough Awards theater, but it's the peddle version that really pumps out the shells—200 lbs/hr to be exact, compared to 125 lb/hour by hand. We tried it out before Brandis gave us a demonstration himself, and once you get that puppy moving, shells start flying (they have two-thirds the BTU content of coal, so the shells are helping a cause themselves).

Brandis and his Full Belly Project have just made a shipment to Uganda, but the bike-like sheller's efficiency in the Third World doesn't have a profit motive. Brandis told us he expects the open-sourced design to be improved in local metal factories, and it was the low-fi approach that attracted his other partners in good at MIT's D-Lab.

"For the MIT guys, their idea of ultra low-tech is a $100 computer you can build," Brandis said. "Mine is a lump of cement that spins around." –Matt Sullivan

LIVE BLOG: Test Drives on the Outside, Geniuses Inside

It's a beautiful night in midtown Manhattan as PM's 2006 Breakthrough Awards kick into high gear. Outside the Hearst Tower—an innovative feat in its own right—the lights are shining bright and the geniuses are pouring in.

Right behind the Lexus on our test-drive row, DaimlerChrysler was showing off a model stocked with its BlueTec engine—the cleanest diesel around and another of our ten most brilliant product winners.

We're headed upstairs past the Hearst Tower's green-friendly, rainwater waterfall to check out the rest of our top gizmos and schmooze with PM's esteemed guests. Back soon! –Matt Sullivan

LIVE BLOG: Winners Meet, Greet and Compete

We're working the room here at the Breakthrough Awards pre-show cocktail hour, where innovators of all ages from opposite fields—and competing companies—are meeting each other for the first time, talking with PM editors or just trying to avoid the four-legged BigDog robot (middle of page) stumbling around the room.

PM contributor Logan Ward, who has written our Breakthrough Awards feature story for the magazine the past two years, told us he saw some ideas hatching as this year's winners got to know each other. After Tesla CEO and Breakthrough winner Martin Eberhard sparred a bit with Rutan during our live podcast earlier this evening, Ward watched Eberhard talk about his battery-powered sports car with MIT's Dr. Angela Belcher—a Breakthrough innovator for her nano-tech virus-cum-battery. Some day, Ward ventured, maybe the lithium-ion technology used for viral manufacturing would power a convertible.

For more from the Breakthrough pre-show, including Ward's innovations that just missed the cut, tune in to an upcoming regular podcast version of The Popular Mechanics Show. –Matt Sullivan

LIVE BLOG: Breaking Out

We're live inside the main event, huddled in the back row of the 2006 Breakthrough Awards, as PM Editor-in-Chief Jim Meigs hands out our product awards and we get ready for Burt Rutan's Leadership Award acceptance speech.

Stay tuned for our webcast of the entire awards show later this week, and don't forget to check back tomorrow for event photos, wrap-up blogs and that part of today's two-hour live version of The Popular Mechanics Show. See y'all then! –Matt Sullivan

October 5, 2006

LIVE BLOG: Kids in the Hall

After the 2006 Breakthrough Awards ceremony, we caught up with half the team of young engineers from Dartmouth College, who were honored with our Next Generation Award (last item).

The GyroBike, developed by Hannah Murnen, Augusta Niles, Nathan Sigworth and Deborah Sperling, sat gleaming in the lobby of the Hearst Tower, while fellow inventors admired the design of the silver gyroscope clamped to the front tire of a red child's bike.

"We didn't know much about gyroscopes," Sigworth admitted. But clearly the learning curve was quick. The product of a school project, their invention fills an untapped niche in the marketplace.

Murnen said their inspiration started with thinking about Sigworth's passion for unicycling and ways to make that kind of bike more stable. But, as they acknowledged, there isn't a huge demand for unicycle stabilizers. Hence the application of the young engineers' ideas to a children's bike.

Thanks to the Dartmouth team, kids trying to learn how to ride a bike in the future are going to have it a lot easier than their parents did. That is, if the GyroBike crew can figure out a plan to officially launch their product in the marketplace. "It's a great learning experience for us," Murnen said of the whole process, including building a business plan. --Carolyn Wilsey